Obama strategy: Equal pay, not abortion

Move over, Jane Roe. Lilly Ledbetter has taken her place as the name on the tongue of Democrats courting female voters.

On June 23, Barack Obama kicked off a “discussion for working women” with a speech directed at working mothers that criticized John McCain for his support of conservative judges, decisions and legislation.

Story Continued Below

But he didn’t once mention or even allude to abortion or Roe v. Wade. Instead, he keyed in on Ledbetter, the woman whose suit against Goodyear for pay discrimination was thrown out by the Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision last year delivered by Justice Samuel Alito. The decision upheld a lower court’s ruling that she only had 180 days after she was hired to discover the pay disparity and file suit.

The court’s decision in the case, Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., had already been cited 221 times in decisions by lower federal courts as of late April, according to the Alliance for Justice. Earlier this year, the Fair Pay Restoration Act — which would have effectively undone Ledbetter by giving women more leeway to file discrimination suits and was co-sponsored by both Obama and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton — failed to pass the Senate.

“Sen. McCain thinks the Supreme Court got it right. He opposed the Fair Pay Restoration Act,” Obama said. “Lilly Ledbetter’s problem was not that she was somehow unqualified or unprepared for higher-paying positions. She most certainly was, and by all reports she was an excellent employee. Her problem was that her employer paid her less than men who were doing the exact same work.”

See also

McCain, who skipped the vote on the Fair Pay act, told reporters that "I am all in favor of pay equity for women, but this kind of legislation, as is typical of what's being proposed by my friends on the other side of the aisle, opens us up to lawsuits for all kinds of problems."

By shifting his focus toward pay issues and away from abortion, Obama places himself in a far less polarized environment, and steers clear of the “ick factor” that many Americans, regardless of their political views, associate with the practice of abortion.

“This isn't just an economic issue for millions of Americans and their families. It's a question of who we are as a country — of whether we're going to live up to our values as a nation,” he said.

“Usually, when we talk about the Court, it's in the context of reproductive rights and Roe v. Wade,” he continued, affirming — albeit in passing — his support for the 1973 abortion decision. “But the Supreme Court also affects women's lives in so many other ways — from decisions on equal pay, to workplace discrimination, to Title IX, to domestic violence, to civil rights and workers' rights.”

Nan Aron, the President and founder of the Alliance for Justice and a veteran of judicial nomination fights that focused on Roe, sees Ledbetter as “a frame around the Supreme Court in an election year … because it illustrates or exemplifies how this court has caused so much damage.”